In a land far away many years ago, we got involved in the relocation of some villages to what was called strategic hamlets. That involved loading up the ol' Chinook with villagers, their belongings, waterfowl, chickens, pigs, and canines and flying them to their new and supposedly "safe" locale. You can imagine the fun this provided hauling all sorts of critters and people in a helicopter for their very first ride....all at one time.
When it came down to fetching the water buffalo, the Army came up with a novel idea. (Army Novel Ideas can be interesting!) They did not want to sling load the Water Buffalo's as they felt it would traumatize the poor critters thus the Army came up with a grand scheme. The Army fetched in some Vets (All Creatures Great and Small types), who drugged the Buff's so they would sleep the trip away. The plan was simple....land the Chinook with the Buff at the ramp....fire up the trusty cargo winch and drag slumbering Buff into the aircraft, throw a strap or two over the dozing critters, and away off to the Promised Land we went. At the landing site....a small truck with a heavy rope was used to drag the snoozing Buff off the aircraft and away we went for the next couple.
Several rounds into this we got the system working.....just like clockwork until we had to shut down for a quick maintenance break and refuel. We grabbed our next load of a single Buff and off we went. About halfway there....Buff woke up from a bad dream....figured out the bad dream was not as frightul as the nightmare extant. Add in the noise of the Chinook, the headache the poor critter had from the drugs, and some very sore hide from being dragged into the aircraft, and the next thing I knew I had two door gunners and a flight engineer crowding into the cockpit with the coey and myself. That was a bit awkward....but not nearly as awkward as when the Buff decided he wanted to take a tour of the cockpit to complete his orientation to US Army Helicopter Air Mobile Operations. This was topped by my very alert, motivated, but slightly less than mentally agile gunner who said he was going to shoot the Buff with his trusty dusty Army issued Colt 1911 .45 Caliber Automatic Pistol.
Next thing I know....I hear three loud reports from the pistol....animal sounds that cannot be described adequately....and the realization we had a most unhappy passenger who was complaining about the inflight service arrangements. Added to all of his other miseries, the poor Buff now had ear problems from the muzzle blast from the pistol and some dents in his armor plated noggin. Having seen enough of the cockpit, the Buff rearranged the cabin, spied the ramp exit opening luring him away from the cockpit and took a tour of the aft end of the helicopter.
About this time the LZ appeared and we landed without the usual flourishes and the flight engineer went out the passenger door up front and used the external access to the ramp control to lower the ramp. He said the last he saw of the Buff it was stampeding out of the village at a high rate of hay consumption heading west towards Laos.
I never hauled another Buffalo inside the Chinook after that.....and developed a very strong resistance to participating in anything preceded by Army Enlightened Thought if at all possible. From then on, the Buffs went by cargo net as an underslung load. They ran the whole way according to the flight engineers who watched them as the Buffs rode the net.